A senior manager tried to make Swiss Peter share an office with a smelly man. Of course, it did not go as planned.

He has been asked to demonstrate his job to some colleagues from elsewhere in the police. He is intended to cover things like sick leave or holidays. This begins with a man nearing retirement, whom he does not know.

Something isn’t right. Peter is seen leaving his office several times. He doesn’t really do anything. He sits in the canteen drinking tea. Sometimes he goes to [senior manager’s] office. He doesn’t look happy.

The conversations were something like this, with Peter speaking in English:

Peter: “Not comfortable. This man, he smell. I can’t think.”

Senior Manager: “Peter, you can’t pick and choose who you work with. You have to respect people.”

Peter: “Today, I choose. You tell him, go away. Because, he smelly.”

Senior Manager: “This is a sensitive topic. How can I explain that without offending him?”

Peter: *Getting upset.* “I don’t want him upset. But explain it, not my problem. You want me do your job? Give me your salary.”

Senior Manager: “Peter, he could have a disability?”

Peter: “Okay. Contact [Employee’s Health Department]. Get [support plan for disabled employees]. I see it, please. Happy lunch.”

And with that, he left for lunch. Basically, Peter refused to share an office with someone with bad hygiene. Honestly, I agree with him. He never insulted the man, but he insisted the management take responsibility.

Peter was gone for over an hour. Peter returned with a bag from an exotic food store, but he didn’t go back to his office. My phone rings.

Senior Manager: “Can you come to my office? Bring a gas mask.”

I go, ignoring the mask comment. Peter is sitting at [Senior Manager’s] desk, with a plate and some food. The smell is… strong.

Peter: “Ah! Hello [My Name]! You like durian?”

He holds out his plate. Durian is a fruit from Southeast Asia known for its strong smell. Most places don’t stock it, which explains the exotic shopping bag.

Me: “Peter, you can’t have that at work.”

Peter: “Why? My office, really smelly.”

Me: “Peter, don’t be like this. What do you want?”

Peter: “I tell [Senior Manager] already. The smelly man, he go. Fix the smell. Shower, clean clothes. You tell managers: hygiene important. I meet smelly man another day.”

Me: “So, you would still work with him?”

Peter: *Sets can of surstromming on the desk.*

Surstromming is rotten fish. It’s a Swedish delicacy, and it’s strong.

Peter: “Yes. No problem.”

Senior Manager: “We might offend—”

Me: “[Senior manager] please don’t—”

Peter: *Opens the tin of surstromming, empties it onto his plate; the smell is a lot worse.* “I need [container for dangerous hazardous evidence]. Biological weapon.”

Peter got what he wanted. [Smelly Man] left for the day, and Peter vacated the manager’s office, having taught him the value of hygiene. A new date has been scheduled for his work with [Smelly Man].

The next day, I see a container in the fridge used for hazardous evidence.

Me: “Hey Peter, what’s in the dangerous evidence bag? I hope you didn’t bring durian and surstromming.”

Peter: “No. Chicken and lettuce sandwich.”

Related:
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No Bad Beef On His Watch!
Avoca-Do The Right Thing
No Dry Officers On His Watch!
No Bobs Left Behind On His Watch!

I have posted several stories about my career as an amateur soccer referee before. Here’s another one.

One of the rules of the game is called “advantage”. It allows the referee to ignore a foul that has been committed if stopping the game and penalizing it actually benefits the offender. For instance, if a player runs through the defence, is fouled on the way, but manages to keep going and scores, he’d rather have the goal than be given a free kick.

As is well known to any sports referee, another thing that happens is that players yell at you. Any decision you make, someone will disagree. Put these two things together, and you have today’s story.

I was officiating a match when an attacker tried to dribble past a defender. He skipped past, and the defender grabbed his shirt and held him back. Immediately, a player on the attacking team started shouting very loudly for his teammate to receive a free kick.

Player: “Oi ref! Free kick!”

I was, in fact, about to blow my whistle and award the free kick, but then I noticed something: the attacker wasn’t giving up. He kept trying to fight his way past the defender, who was still holding and pulling the attacker’s shirt, arms, and shoulders. Several players now started joining in the shouts for a foul to be given.

Players: “Heeey! Ref! Ref!”

I quickly looked over at one of them while play continued. He was waving his arms frantically, shouting and appealing for a free kick, as if believing I hadn’t noticed the foul of his teammate.

I then returned to focus on what was now turning into a full-on wrestling match, both attacker and defender holding, pushing, shoving and fighting for the ball, all while still running beside each other.

Now, there’s nothing in the rules about how long a referee should wait before making a decision on advantage; it’s left up to the ref’s discretion. Normally, though, a ref will only wait a couple of seconds to see if the player gets an advantage immediately. 

This time, it took longer. Five seconds, six, seven… In my head, the situation was still unresolved; the attacker was still trying to fight his way past the defender, and if he managed it, it would be an advantage. If he didn’t, I could always go back and award the free kick. That’s what I was preparing to do, holding the whistle in my mouth and getting ready to stop play.

The foul started perhaps twenty metres (around sixty-five feet) away from the goal. At this point, the ‘wrestlers’ had fought their way deep inside the penalty box, approaching the goal line. Meanwhile, the attacker’s teammates were getting louder and louder, not understanding that I was delaying the decision while looking to see if I could give them an advantage, and quite possibly believing that this referee must be both blind, deaf and stupid not to notice such an obvious foul being committed right in front of him. Especially one of them was now running right up to me and shouting from just a few feet away.

Player: “HEY! HEEEY! REF! OI!”

Then, resolution.

The attacker, brilliantly, made it all the way down to the goal line and managed to actually score, slotting the ball past the goalkeeper while still fighting off his opponent. He had made it all the way down to about three feet away from the goal, and I had delayed making a decision by so long that it felt like an eternity.

Now, though, I finally blew the whistle and awarded the goal instead of the free kick. The attacking team cheered the goal and ran up to the goalscorer to celebrate while I started running back to the middle of the field to restart the game.

As I passed the player who had shouted the loudest, I gave him a pointed look and said:

Me: “Get it now?”

Player: “Yep! Yep!”

He gave me a huge smile and two thumbs up.

Related:
Please Observe Our Looks Of Disdain
Please Observe The Torrential Downpour
Offside Explained (Again And Again And Again…)

Hello, you know me from this story. Here’s yet another story illustrating my fat-headed father’s annoying behavior patterns.

Cell phones were relatively new when I was young. I got a flip phone, a Motorola RAZR, in 2002, when I was in Jr High, so that I could keep in touch with my parents and my friends. I kept that phone through high school into college.

The phone was tough, durable, and suited to my needs as a rugged kid with too much energy, a tendency to run the contents of my pockets through the wash, and a tendency to free-solo trees, buildings, and low cliffs. 

It worked perfectly for the first six or so years I owned it. The seventh year, it developed a weird glitch. Whenever I was out of state, it would not make any calls. It could RECEIVE call, but it could not make them.

This was a problem mostly when visiting my grandparents, aunts, and uncles since I really didn’t have any other reason to leave the state. 

I told my dad about it every time we left the state, of course, which was usually about thrice a year. As soon as we crossed state lines, a big symbol that said “No outgoing calls permitted” would show up on my phone.

Me: “Hey Dad, remember, my phone stops working every time we leave the state.”

Dad: “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Me: “You’ll be able to call me, but I won’t be able to call you. Don’t worry, I’m still able to text when this happens.”

Dad: “Okay.”

And every time we’d visit Grandma’s, SOMETHING would come up where I would need to get in touch with him, and I’d text message him, and he’d ask why I didn’t call him after responding to the text message, and I’d reply:

Me: “Because, for whatever reason, outgoing calls stopped working on this phone when I’m out of state”

Dad: “But why would the state you’re in make any difference?”

Me: “I don’t know.”

Dad: “Okay.”

Finally, an event happened where his phone battery was dead, and he wanted to call his sister. He borrowed my phone to do so.

Me: “It’s not going to work; my phone doesn’t allow outgoing calls when out of state.”

Dad: “That’s ridiculous. Let me use your phone.”

Me: “Okay.”

He tries to call his sister:

Dad: “Why isn’t it working?”

Me: “My phone stopped allowing outgoing calls while it was physically out of state three years ago.”

Dad: “But why?”

Me: “I don’t know”

Finally, he took me to a phone kiosk to get it looked at. Apparently, nine-year-old phones were rare, so the kiosk guy had to call an older guy who was more experienced.

Kiosk Guy: “Yeah, you’ve got roaming turned off, should be an easy fix. Just go into settings and set the phone to permit roaming”

Dad: “My plan doesn’t charge roaming; that doesn’t make any sense.”

Kiosk Guy: “Just change the setting…”

Dad: *To me.* “Change the setting.”

Me: “There’s no roaming setting on the phone.”

Dad: *To the kiosk guy.* “There’s no roaming setting on the phone.”

Kiosk Guy: “There has to be, otherwise how could it be turned off?”

Dad: “Give it to me.”

Me: “Okay.”

Dad pokes at it.

Dad: “There’s no roaming setting.”

Kiosk Guy: “Let me see that.”

The kiosk guy takes it. He pokes at it. He pokes some more.

Kiosk Guy: “How can the roaming be turned off if there’s no roaming setting?!”

Well, the phone was nine years old at that point and well outside the warranty. I wound up getting a new phone, my first smartphone.

For once, after this interaction, Dad was apologetic for not listening to me, and this started the changeover where he started treating me more as an adult and being better about respecting my opinion, though he still sometimes gets stubborn, like in this story. He no longer lets his stubbornness affect my comfort, just his own.

I’m with a therapy dog group; two or three times each week, my canine partner and I volunteer at local schools and libraries to work with students who need a little help with their reading skills. Baldur is a handsome, long-haired German shepherd and a big favorite of the kids, but I didn’t quite realize how popular he was until recently.

It is pertinent to this story that, while I live in a rural area, the county population is 175K, so it’s not as though everybody is on first-name terms with everybody else. It’s also pertinent that all of the dogs in our volunteer group have their own “trading cards”, glossy color bookmarks with their photos and a brief biography, and the handler’s name printed on each one. We hand them out to new readers and as prizes at the end of the school year.

I’m at my dentist’s office for my twice-yearly appointment and am greeted by the tech. She parks me in the chair, drapes me in that little paper bib, and begins to chat as she lays out her tools.

Dentist: “So, how is Baldur?”

Me: “Um… Okay, I guess?”

Dentist: “My daughter reads with him at [Local Elementary School]. She talks about him all the time!”

A few weeks later, I’m at a drive-through cleaner’s, one that I go to maybe once every three months. We’re on our way to school, so Baldur is in the back seat. The man at the window is a complete stranger.

Guy: “Good morning, [My Name]! And how is Baldur today?”

Me: “Ah…he’s fine?”

Guy: “I thought I recognized you two. My kid reads with him at [Local Public Library]. May I give him a biscuit?”

It’s gotta be the bookmarks.

Related:
Hungry (For Pets) Like The Wolf
May There Be Many More Doggie Pats In Her Future
When They Only Like You For Your Dog
Swoop And Squat And SCURRY AWAY!
It’s Not Baldur’s Fault He Has No Thumbs!

Another story about Peter, the much-loved, special employee at the Swiss police

We are drinking coffee. Enter, Peter:

Peter: “Aunt Amanda does not like that I boil beef.”

So, no context. To add to the confusion, we know little about Peter’s private life, and he seems amused. [Coworker #1] is browsing social media on his phone.

Me: “Okay?”

Peter: “I tell you how she is silly. [Coworker #1], stop Facebook.”

He has a story to tell. Put simply, he bought a large piece of meat at a cheap price, then a tabletop device to slice it with. He is trying to reduce unprocessed food, so when he saw 2kg of beef at a very reduced cost, it made sense to buy it. The electric knife (from the Goodwill) has a rotating blade, and you use a safety guard to push the meat into the blade.

Then he sought advice from Aunt Amanda on how to use it. He showed us their WhatsApp conversation, which goes a little like this.

Peter: “I have 2kg [brand] beef. I need to slice. I have electric knife. To slice, fresh or frozen?

Aunt Amanda: “Oh! From [organic farm] up in Bavaria! Slice it fresh. Beautiful meat, that is. You can pan fry it, virgin olive oil. Rub some on the pan. It goes lovely with paprika. And turmeric. I have some spices you can try!

Peter: “Thank you. I slice fresh. But no fry I boil.”

Aunt Amanda: “Boil beef? Not for [premium brand]. If you fry it in the pan, the flavours dance on your tongue! I like it with [regional Swiss cheese] and chianti wine!”

Peter: “You answer question already. Thank you. I boil beef.”

Aunt Amanda: “But… why?

Peter: “Boil is easy. I lazy. Thank you.”

Aunt Amanda: “I have some lovely spices you can try!”

Aunt Amanda: “Hello?”

Peter carefully set up his meat equipment, with a safety guard, and started cutting the beef into slices. Then, he started over and cut the slices into strips. He threw it all into a big pot with water, on the stove.

Aunt Amanda: “[College in small town] do a course in country cooking!”

Peter: *sends picture of the beef boiling in a pot*

Aunt Amanda: “No, Peter, this is not how you cook nice Bavarian steaks.”

Peter: “I do it already. I ask how to slice, not how to cook.”

Let’s go back to the coffee table. Peter gets out a Ziploc bag.

Peter: “[Coworker #1], this for your puppy.”

Coworker #1: “What is it?”

Peter: “Biltong.”

Coworker #1: “What?”

Peter: “Dried meat treat, from South African. Well, no. Bavarian.”

Coworker #1: “Oh, thank you.”

Me: “Peter, what did you do? Did you make beef jerky from some of the beef?”

Peter: “All of.”

That’s right. Peter not only incensed his Aunt Amanda by boiling the beef, but he also dehydrated it, like beef jerky or biltong. He then set some aside for [Coworker #1’s] dachshund.

Me: “That’s kind, Peter. Two questions: why do you boil it if it tastes better fried?”

Peter: “Boil it, one hour later, finished, one pot scrub. I lazy.”

Me: “Okay. That makes sense. Why did you make all of it into beef jerky?”

Peter: “Travel. Camping. Stays fresh. Unprocessed food. Works for me.”

“Works for me.” That reminded me a bit about respecting boundaries and “advice.” When you offer advice to someone, have they asked for it? Does what they do affect you? It was his beef all along.

Related:

Avoca-Do The Right Thing
No Dry Officers On His Watch!
No Bobs Left Behind On His Watch!
No Lapses In Security On His Watch!
No Neglected Post On His Watch!
No Accident K’Boom Explode On His Watch!